


fighting dragons with you

by sixtywattgloom



Category: Fifth Harmony (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:56:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2360354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtywattgloom/pseuds/sixtywattgloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>They’re seven years old the first time they face down a dragon, armed only with swords and their wits.</i> or, a fic about camila and dinah growing up together and growing up apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fighting dragons with you

**Author's Note:**

> written as a [commission fic](http://5horbust.tumblr.com/post/98259347729/fanfic-commissions) for lea because she's awesome. also in response to the prompt 'little kids getting way too caught up in make-believe AU’. it ended up being way longer than i meant it to me - but then again, i'm me - and i tried some things i'm not as comfortable with, but hopefully if you read it you find it closer to the not-sucking side of the spectrum! thanks for checking it out. <33

They’re seven years old the first time they face down a dragon, armed only with swords and their wits.

That’s what Camila says, anyway—because someone with “wits” has, like, good brains, or a lot of them, or something. Anyway, Camila’s smart, so Dinah doesn’t doubt her. She says it in a low voice, too, like a voice from a movie trailer, and they both giggle for about five minutes before remembering they’re supposed to be fighting a fire-breathing beast. 

(The swords are foam, Legoland’s logo imprinted on the hilt; Dinah kidnapped them from the drawer in her cousin’s closet, but he hasn’t used them for at least a month, anyway. Besides, they’re way better at dragon slaying.)

The dragon always loses. Sometimes the dragon becomes their friend, carrying them across the kingdom and helping them in all of their various quests—from saving kidnapped royalty to folding their socks—and sometimes the dragon refuses, chooses evil over good, and they have to lock  _it_ away in a tower.

They usually choose the option where they get to fly, though.

Naturally, they take turns steering—sometimes it’ll be Dinah’s legs wrapped around Camila, the two of them perched on the counter where Dinah’s mom is trying to cut vegetables, and sometimes it’ll be Camila’s chin on Dinah’s shoulder, flying their dragon-desk to new heights.

They’re the good guys, so they win. Plus, they have awesome swords.

* 

They’re ten years old when Camila breaks her wrist being Spider-Man. (She can never seem to decide whether she wants to be Spider-Man or be married to Spider-Man, so Dinah tells her she’ll marry her and that seems to clear things up.)

She’s leaping from the lawn chair to the railing in the backyard—only three inches wide but high enough up that when she topples to the ground Dinah swears she  _hears_  it. It’s somewhere between a thud and a crunch, and it makes her sick the way nothing has since she was eight and drank a capful of detergent. 

Dinah doesn’t remember much else, then: she remembers the sound of Camila’s scream, and she remembers gathering her up into her lap, tearing off the bottom half of her shirt because that’s what they do in movies. She remembers saying  _I love you_ over and over and over, like the sheer force of that would fix everything.

At ten, it’s the scariest thing Dinah has ever been through.

Dinah’s the first one to write on her cast, fills the empty space with  _don’t trip loser!!!!!_  and  _luv u lots chancho_ and spiderwebs, in case Camila forgets about her superpowers. 

*

The dragons never disappear. They’re twelve years old when Camila leaps into Dinah’s bed and curls up against her side and tells her Volcano’s about to take off. ( _Take to the skies_ , she says, because she read it somewhere and it sounds cool.) 

“Better be smooth,” Dinah mumbles. “I need to get my beauty sleep in.”

“Sleep? We have kingdoms to rescue! There are knights in distress! Heroes don’t have time for vacations!”

“This hero’s gonna punch you in the face,” Dinah says, but she turns to face Camila, wraps an arm around her to pull her closer. Camila always falls asleep fastest, that way—when they’re closest, when she can hear both of their hearts beating out the same rhythm. Or something. 

Dinah falls asleep thinking about riding on the back of a surprisingly comfortable dragon, the world beneath her full of tiny castles beside tiny towns beside tiny endless forests—and her best friend curled up against her chest.  

They win together in her dreams, too.

*

They’re fifteen years old the last time they pretend to be knights.

It doesn’t mean they never pick up swords, never bring them to school and fight their way through the hall and trip over a few people along the way, earn a few bruises falling into lockers. (That’s Camila. Dinah sucks way less, obviously.)

It doesn’t mean Camila never makes Spider-Man hands or jumps off of couches or Dinah doesn’t laugh watching her fall on her face (these days usually in less damaging ways, though no one would guess from the number of bruises she accumulates).

It definitely doesn’t mean they spend less time together—maybe even the opposite. The nights stretch longer and they fall asleep later; Camila picks up a guitar for the first time and they sing together while she fumbles through the notes. Gets them right.

She’s really, really good—Dinah tells her all the time, even when she’s trying to be busy telling her how annoying she is, and just, like,  _keeps getting better_. They’ll sit on Camila’s bed, propped against the headboard, and Dinah will sing and Camila will find the chords and it feels like forever. Like the kind of forever that she wants. 

*

They’re sixteen when Dinah dates a boy for the first time, because boys sometimes notice her and sometimes they turn when she walks by, and it’s weird. Mostly she and Camila giggle about it together in their rooms, but then one of them finally stops her. 

He’s cute, and he has a nice smile, and he’s also a football player, so Dinah says yes. Neither of them really know what they’re doing, but he takes her out for Mexican food and Dinah scores the best tacos she’s had in, like, a month. So that’s cool.

He kisses her on the next date, and she likes that, too.

He drops her off at Camila’s, and Dinah sneaks upstairs only to find the girl sitting up in bed, computer in her lap, waiting to hear absolutely everything.

Which Dinah tells her, ‘cause Camila’s her best friend, and that’s what you do.

Camila doesn’t tell her she’s worried it might never happen to her. Camila doesn’t tell her she wonders if any boy will ever like her the way boys like Dinah, or if she’ll ever have her first kiss. She’s happy for Dinah, with a smile so sincere that she sort of glows, like one of those fish at the bottom of the ocean that make their own light, ‘cause it’s so dark everywhere else. Except prettier, ‘cause Camila’s pretty.

Camila doesn’t say any of those things but Dinah knows anyway, because they’ve spent their whole lives fighting crime and saving the world and riding dragons together.

“You’re gonna get the best guy in the world, Mila,” she whispers against her neck. “No way you’re not getting a happily ever after.”

Camila spins around to wrap her free arm and her free leg all the way around Dinah, presses a firm kiss against her cheek. “I love you,” she says, and Dinah says  _I love you more_  and it’s the last thing she remembers before she falls asleep. Before they fall asleep.

* 

They’re eighteen when Dinah decides she wants to pursue music and Camila gets accepted into MIT.

“I don’t know if I can move across the country without you,” Camila tells her, and her voice is trembling and her hands are trembling and she won’t quite meet Dinah’s eyes. “I miss you when we’re not in the same  _room_ , Dinah. How am I supposed to do this? I don’t think I can be…not with you.” 

It’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to Dinah. It’s scarier than all the bad guys in all the movies she’s ever seen, and it’s scarier than that movie where the murderer’s inside the house. It’s scarier than the time she went to the hospital to see her grandpa and everything was white and there were beeping sounds coming from everywhere and she could hear all the breaths he took, like they echoed. They told her everything would be okay, but it felt then like a place where nothing could ever be okay again.

“C’mon,” she says, “the good guys always win.” And then, quietly, “Everybody’s gonna love you.”

Camila buries into Dinah’s side, lip trembling uncontrollably. “I don’t know.”

“They will. Mila, look,” she says, resting her finger under her chin, gently pushing it up to meet her gaze. “You’re, like—the best person I’ve ever met. You make everything better for everybody else. You  _are_ Spider-Man.” 

Camila smiles and cries all at once, and her tears soak through Dinah’s top until she can feel them against her skin. “They’ll love you, Mila,” she insists.

“Not like you,” Camila chokes out, words muffled against Dinah’s shoulder. “Nobody’s gonna love me like you.”

*

They’re nineteen when Camila dates a boy for the first time. Dinah demands his Facebook information first thing, so she can stalk and offer an appropriate evaluation, but she already knows it’ll be a yes. Camila accidentally smiles when she says his name, like she can’t help herself, and making Camila happy is the only thing that really matters. 

He’s cute, too, but Dinah’s not surprised about that. “Bet you got half the dudes in that school sniffing at your door,” she says, and Camila rolls her eyes and tells her to  _shut up and stop flirting_ , and it’s like this weird thing happens in her chest, like everything squeezes tight around her heart, like for a second she can’t get enough air into her lungs.

“Cheenz? Dinah, you okay?” She says yes because she doesn’t know why she  _wouldn’t_ be, and because Camila’s got the hot boyfriend she never thought she’d have.

“So,” she says, “how’re his—hands?”

Camila tells her how much she hates her when she can finally manage it through her laughter, and then she tells her what color his hair is, and what he told her the night before, and what kind of shirts he likes to wear, and Dinah’s glad.

* 

Dinah’s twenty when she gets a recording contract, and she’s still only twenty when, miraculously, people start to know her name.

She’s at the grocery store when someone calls it out the first time—no makeup, hair a mess, looking closer to homeless than celebrity—but she turns disbelieving all the same. The girl’s maybe sixteen, smiling this bright smile that looks a little like awe, like disbelief.

“You’re Dinah Jane, right?” she says. “I love your music! You’re amazing.” 

Dinah takes about twenty pictures with the girl, tells her she loves her, and waves goodbye, still looking one hundred percent disgusting but smiling like maybe she’ll never stop.

She texts Camila that night, and it only takes her a few hours to reply with a text that’s mostly exclamation points and then one that’s a lot of keysmashing.  _UR A STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK OUT DINAH JANE COMIN THROUGH!!!!!!!!_ she reads, and it makes her warm in a way that few other things can, in a way that makes her worry two and a half years too late.

They don’t fall out—not even a little bit. But Camila starts having exams to worry about, and hours and hours of studying that will hopefully get her into med school, and Dinah thinks that’s the coolest thing in the whole world. She still texts her on exam days, tells her she’s gonna kick butt, that she’s gonna kill everybody. Because Dinah knows she will. Because even at the smartest school in, like, the entire universe, Camila’s making it happen.

And Dinah’s busy, too—Dinah has an album to record and tours she’s starting and choreography to memorize, and she can barely up with it all as it is.

Dinah’s pretty sure it’s supposed to get easier. It’s been two years since they were in the same place for more than a couple weeks, and that’s supposed to feel normal.

Instead, it feels like she’s straddling this line between Camila and Dinah and CamilaandDinah, and the extra space makes her feel like she’s standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, waiting to fall.

* 

Dinah’s twenty-one when she’s sure that she’s spent most of her life in love with a girl who’s maybe her best friend. 

It happens by accident—it happens at a club with a girl who has a bright smile and dark, curly hair, who’s drunk enough to kiss Dinah like there’s a lot of other things she wants to do with her, too.

They don’t do other things, but it’s enough. It’s enough to sit in the driver’s seat of her car and hope no one knew her there, hope no cameras flashed, hope her family won’t find out like this, with the world pressing in around them, hungry for answers that make the juiciest headlines. 

She scrolls through her contacts and stops at Camila’s name before she even knows what she’s doing.

But—of course it’s Camila. Of course it’s always been Camila. Of course she was too stupid to figure it out.

She never presses call.

+ 

The song ideas she scribbles onto paper aren’t supposed to ever see the light of day. They’re written in a frenzy, in a desperate outpouring of confusion and emotions she never knew she had and emotions she always knew she had. Her hand trembles, but she fills the pages, and she fills the margins, and she’s been waiting to write it for twenty-one years.

They want to see her ideas, and she shows it to them, against her better judgment. They tell her it might be the best thing she’s ever done.

They change some of the wording, fill in the spaces with words she couldn’t name; they find a rhythm, they tell her  _it’s a number one, for sure. Straight to the top of the charts, DJ! Look out, world!_

“I know, I’m amazing,” she says, laughingly, but it doesn’t solve the nausea that settles in her stomach, and it doesn’t still her shaking hands.

* 

She’s twenty-two when she tells her family it’s not just boys.

They don’t understand, at first. She never expected them to. Their response is mostly a lot of everything she felt, pressing heavy on her chest—confusion, a little bit of anger, a little bit of hurt. She tells them she’s still her, and she says she’s sorry, even though she’s not really sure that she wants to be. No one kicks her out of the house.

Sometimes maybe the dragons don’t have teeth or claws or stashes of gold. Sometimes maybe they love her and they want her to be happy, but they don’t really know what that means. Sometimes maybe they stop breathing fire, but they still don’t know exactly how to get off the ground.

And sometimes the hero’s a team of one.

+ 

The song comes out a week later, and they were right. It debuts at number one and it stays there, and she celebrates with her management and then some of her fans, as many as will fit in the building. She spends the whole night taking duck face selfies, telling them they’re the coolest people she’s ever met, that they’re the best part of everything.

 _The heroes don’t always win,_ she hears them singing back to her.  _And sometimes the dragons don’t want to be friends / But I don’t want to fight with anyone but you._

*

They’re twenty-two when Dinah hears a knock on her door that she hasn’t heard since she was sixteen—three times at the top, twice at the bottom, and then a random mess of something like drumming.

She opens up her door to find the only person it could have been.

“Dinah, did you get—any of my texts? Any of my calls? Did you drop off the face of the planet or something because that’s kinda rude.” She says it like she’s joking, but she hasn’t stopped moving her hands, or swinging her arms, and Dinah knows she’s a lot more than joking.

“I, uh, changed my number. Sorta gave it out on a twitcam and got a bunch of calls from creepers,” she admits, and Camila laughs. It fills up the space with something familiar.

“You’re supposed to tell me that kind of a thing, you know,” she says. “That’s definitely best friend territory. That’s, like, number one on the list of things you tell your best friend. I mean, you're my only best friend, but--I'm pretty sure that's how best friend codes work.” 

“Yeah,” Dinah says. “Sorry.”

“I’m starting med school,” she says. “You wrote a song about me.” She barely takes a breath, like the two somehow have everything to do with each other.

“Should’ve let you know,” Dinah admits, her voice hardly above a whisper. “Guess it’s kinda hard to call a girl up and tell her you’re about to drop a song about being in love with her your whole life.”

“Like— _in love_ in love. Like you want to kiss me on the mouth and go on dates with me and buy wedding dresses—not now, I mean, but like—that kind of in love?”

“Um. Yeah,” Dinah says. “Except I haven’t been thinking about weddings. I don’t know where your head’s at.” It’s a joke, but neither of them laugh.

“What about making out? Have you thought about making out?”

Dinah stares at the ground, refuses to meet Camila’s eyes. Feels like she’s sixteen years old again, on her first date with a boy, except times a thousand. A million. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Camila says, nodding like she’s gathering her resolve. “Okay.”

She brings her finger to rest under Dinah’s chin and tilts it up a little—enough so she can just lean up to kiss her, like that’s all they ever had to do. Her mouth is warm, and she tastes like Camila—the way she would have at thirteen or seventeen or twenty-two, standing in Dinah’s new apartment in Dinah’s new hallway with everything to lose—and maybe it’s exactly like kissing Spider-Man.

“You like me,” Camila says, and Dinah’s laugh might be louder than it’s been since was eighteen and it felt like it was their world to take together.

“You’re so annoying,” Dinah tells her. And then, “I thought you had a boyfriend.” 

Camila smiles an unexpectedly watery smile. “Nobody loves me like you, Cheech.”

Dinah thinks that if they could fly all over the world on the back of a dragon, it would probably feel a lot like this. 


End file.
